Domestic cats are full of surprises, and a fascinating new study from Turkey adds another layer to our understanding of how these mysterious pets communicate with their human companions.
According to research led by Kaan Kerman and his colleagues at Bilkent University’s Department of Psychology, cats tend to meow significantly more often when greeting male owners compared with female owners.
This intriguing finding sheds light on how cats adjust their vocal behavior in response to different people and suggests that feline communication may be more nuanced and strategic than we once thought.
The Research Setting and Methodology
The researchers designed their study to capture natural interactions between cats and their owners in home environments, rather than in a laboratory setting. Thirty-one pet cats and their caregivers in Türkiye participated in the project, which took place between 2022 and 2024.
Each owner was asked to wear a small camera on their chest before entering their home for the first time that day. The idea was to record the first moments after the owner walked through the door — a period when cats typically show clear greeting behaviors.
To ensure a standardized analysis, the research team focused on the first 100 seconds of each recorded greeting. Within that brief window, they coded 22 distinct behaviors associated with how cats welcome their humans, ranging from rubbing against their legs to vocalizations.
Among these behaviors, meowing stood out as the one that varied consistently according to the owner’s gender.
Main Findings
The standout result of the study was that cats produced vocalizations — particularly meows — far more frequently when male owners returned home than when female owners did.
On average, cats greeted men with about 4.3 meows in the first 100 seconds, compared with only about 1.8 meows when greeting women. This pattern held even after the researchers took into account other factors such as the cats’ age, breed, sex, and household composition.
The researchers interpreted this difference not as a reflection of any inherent trait in men or women, but rather as evidence that cats may be responding to subtle patterns of interaction.
One leading explanation offered by Kerman and his team is that male owners might be less inclined to notice or respond to their cats’ needs immediately upon returning home, prompting the cats to use more frequent vocal cues to get attention.
In contrast, female owners may tend to engage more quickly or communicatively with their cats, reducing the need for repeated meowing.
It’s important to note that this increased vocal frequency refers specifically to greeting behaviors and does not necessarily mean that cats are any more affectionate toward men than women.
In fact, the study did not find a link between meowing frequency and other behaviors such as moving directly toward a food bowl, suggesting that the difference was tied to social interaction rather than other motivations like hunger.
Understanding Feline Communication Strategies
Domestic cats use a variety of signals to communicate with humans. While adult cats rarely meow to one another in natural feline social groups, they readily use vocalizations when interacting with people, a behavior thought to have developed through domestication.
Meowing can serve many purposes: greeting, requesting attention, soliciting food, or signaling unease. In this study, the focus was specifically on greeting vocalizations — the sounds cats make as they acknowledge a person returning home.
The fact that cats adjust how often they meow based on the owner’s gender suggests that they are attuned to differences in how humans respond to their signals.
This aligns with broader research showing that cats can be sensitive to human cues and capable of modifying their behavior to achieve desired outcomes.
Whether it’s increasing vocalization to prompt attention from a less responsive caregiver or using subtle body language to solicit petting, cats appear to be flexible communicators.
Limitations
Although the findings are compelling, they come with some important limitations. The study involved a relatively small sample of 31 cats, all living in Turkey.
Cultural factors and specific caregiving patterns in that region could influence the results, meaning it is not yet clear whether the same gender-related differences would be found in other countries or cultural contexts.
Additionally, the research did not delve deeply into whether factors such as personality traits of the owners — beyond gender — might play a role in shaping cat behavior.
Future research involving larger and more diverse populations of cats and caregivers could help determine whether the patterns observed by Kerman and his colleagues hold true across different environments and social settings.
Cross-cultural studies and investigations into how cats respond to people with different communication styles or levels of engagement would shed further light on the complexity of feline social behavior.
A Peek into the Feline Mind
The study by Kaan Kerman and his team at Bilkent University offers a fascinating glimpse into how domestic cats may tailor their communication strategies according to their human companions.
The finding that cats meow more frequently to men than to women during greeting moments highlights the adaptability of feline vocal behavior and suggests that these animals are not only sensitive to human presence, but also to differences in human interaction styles.
While much remains to be learned, this research adds an important piece to the puzzle of understanding the subtle and dynamic ways cats connect with us.
